Condé Nast CMO Deirdre Findlay: Marketers are 'the voice of the consumer'

Welcome to Marketer Must Read, a weekly newsletter that’s packed with inspiration, perspective on challenges and a look at what other marketers are watching. Click Subscribe above to be notified of each edition.

Permission. It was a lingering theme during my conversation with Deirdre Findlay, the top marketing and consumer revenue leader at Condé Nast, the 109-year-old publishing house best known for titles like Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. While critics are often quick to dismiss “legacy media,” the strength of these brands, Findlay says, gives them the “permission to stay in consumers’ lives.”  

In her role, Findlay faces two sizable marketing challenges: 

First, repositioning Condé Nast to be seen as more than “a magazine company;” as a media empire that brings you products, fitness classes, exclusive events, membership experiences and education. (Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design in London, anyone?) 

Second, dealing with the marketing hurdle best described as “the house” challenge. In its totality, Condé Nast is a world-renowned house of brands. (It has titles in 32 markets and publishes in 26 languages.) Yet each of those brands is famous in its own right -- with its own persona, and baggage. As a parent company, Condé Nast has long understood the power of brand signaling and consumer identity and let the titles speak for themselves: If you’re someone who reads The New Yorker or Vogue, it says something about you. But building up the Condé Nast brand requires thinking bigger than individual titles. So which angle do you lean into as your marketing ethos?

“It's the thing that I think the most about right now,” Findlay says. “Condé Nast is known...but the brands that people really have the affinity for and the relationship with are the individual brands.” 

As Condé Nast and Condé Nast International merge, Findlay needs to unite the global brands under “a common North Star, understanding that there may be local nuance,” she says. “What I'm trying to do is get each brand to pick a major, and that major needs to be global, and you can have your minors because that's what makes it more interesting.” 

Findlay will also need to translate brand credibility, name recognition and loyal relationships into meaningful revenue. She joined Condé Nast in early 2020 from Stitch Fix, the subscription-based personal styling service, where she was CMO. Findlay had previous stints at Google, where she led marketing for its home hardware products; eBay; and the ad agency Digitas. But the through line of her career, she says, is “an obsession with business and consumers.” Below she shares more of her story.

1. What has had the most impact on your perspective as a marketer?

I was lucky enough to start my marketing career as an integrated marketer. When I graduated from business school in 2000, I worked for Digitas, a global marketing agency with a strong consultative bent. Digitas had recently formed from the merger of Bronner Slosberg Humphrey (offline marketing arm) and Strategic Interactive Group (digital arm). I joined the Allstate business which was a former client of both agencies. So we had two different agency teams and two different sets of clients, and someone had the bright idea to drop me in the middle to drive integration across the teams. What seemed crazy at the time ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. I learned both digital and offline marketing and I saw the obvious synergies between the two. That perspective enabled me to make strategic business recommendations that allowed our clients to see their customers holistically.

I like to say that I started my career as an integrated marketer. I never had the bias that one approach — offline or digital — was better than the other. The beauty of both working in concert was apparent to me from the beginning. As a result, I say that my superpower is that I am and have always been a full funnel marketer. I see the power in moving consumers through the journey and have the expertise to flex the right strategies to achieve both brand and revenue goals. 

2. What’s changed the most about your job as a marketer over the course of your career?

The biggest change has been my appreciation for the role. In the beginning, I felt like I was in service to the business. You take the product and figure out the best way to reach the consumer and get them to take the desired action. In the last 10 years, I’ve started to see the role of marketer more broadly. I like to say that “I’m a business person first, I just happen to major in marketing to solve business problems.” This is key! Marketers must swim upstream. As the voice of the consumer, it is our responsibility to represent the consumer in the room. That influence should be used to shape not only the campaigns we bring to market, but also the products that get developed. When you do that well, you not only drive the brand experience but you also drive the business — and that’s what makes it fun.

My role at Condé Nast is a great example of this. My title is Global Chief Marketing Officer, but I also like to think of myself as the Global President of Consumer Revenue. It starts with the business: first, we focus on developing the direct-to-consumer products and business propositions that deliver on the needs of our audiences. Then, we make sure that we have the right marketing strategy to drive awareness and understanding of that offering. Finally, we drive trial. The job used to be primarily focused on the latter half of that process. Today, the role of marketing has become much broader. We drive the business in a more meaningful way and, depending on the role, also have P&L accountability. 

3. What’s the hardest part of a marketer’s job today?

Many marketers struggle to strike the right balance between brand marketing and growth/performance marketing. While they know that both are important, when you are faced with the realities of driving short-term shareholder value and investing in longer-term growth, marketers are often under significant pressure from their CEOs and CFOs to optimize for today. While this tension is understandable, I encourage marketers to continue to fight for the right balance, because we know we’ll face consequences for being too one-sided.

Build a relationship with your CFO. Focus on educating the rest of the C-suite on the value of brand and direct response working together in concert. Create a plan for proving the value of having brand messages in the mix. Socialize the value of brand health metrics and then run ongoing tests to show that your direct marketing efforts perform better when you also have strong brand awareness and understanding. The benefit is that your consumers will already know your brand and why you’re special before they see you in a growth marketing ad. And, get creative about how you build a brand. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. I’m a huge believer in the value of consumer PR — invest here wisely.

4. Tell us about the marketing campaign you’re most proud of working on in your career.

It’s easier to make a mark when you have a lot of money to spend, but I’m most proud of the campaigns that made a significant impact with relatively low marketing spend. When I joined Stitch Fix, I was tasked with thinking about how to introduce brand marketing into their heavy growth and performance marketing efforts. The key was how to do it without compromising the strong growth the team was reaping as a result of their existing efforts. 

We decided to outsmart vs. outspend. Stitch Fix is a brand that helps people feel their best by making them feel confident in their wardrobe choices. We heard time and time again how our clients’ stylists made them feel seen — and we wanted to capitalize on that. We decided to hijack a moment that had meaningful impressions. We chose award season and launched a campaign on Oscar Sunday called “We see you,” with the tagline “We believe you deserve to feel red carpet ready every day.” We leveraged consumer PR along with TV, live experiences, print, out-of-home (OOH), radio, and more to deliver this message in key metros around the United States.

We launched with two stunts — one at The Grove in LA and the other at the Columbus Circle subway station in NYC. We created a live red carpet complete with paparazzi, encouraged everyday people to walk it, and asked them to share what makes them feel red carpet ready. We launched a hero TV spot right before the Oscars and had live integrations with E! — the place where everyone goes to watch the stars walk the red carpet. From there, we launched the more traditional aspects of the campaign. I’m proud because we made our investment of X feel like 10X, and we helped to move consumer perception of our brand.

5. What’s a marketing campaign you wish you’d thought of and why?

The Nike ad featuring Colin Kaepernick. Talk about being on the right side of history and doing what’s right in order to live your company values. I love the boldness of the message and I love the commitment to stand by their beliefs despite the potential to alienate a portion of their customer base. It is a great example of living your purpose to the benefit of society and business. 

6. What’s your must read, watch or listen for all marketers?

There are several podcasts that I listen to, and I’ll highlight a few here. First, “How I Built This with Guy Raz.” Given that my role at Condé Nast is a combination of building consumer revenue propositions and marketing those offerings, I enjoy learning from successful business leaders and hearing their stories of how they built their businesses, the lessons they learned along the way and what they wish they had done differently. Great food for thought as I continue to expand existing revenue models and build net new business models for Condé Nast. 

Second, “CMO Moves” podcast from Adweek. Nadine Dietz and her team do an amazing job of interviewing the top CMOs across a number of different industries. It’s a great way for me to get the inside scoop on what other marketers are facing, what challenges they’re grappling with and the secrets to their success. I recently recorded a “CMO Moves Duos” podcast with Lara Balazs, CMO of Intuit and a good friend. It was so much fun to discuss the topic of agility and speed in today’s business landscape, and a great opportunity to share some of my own insights and gain some new perspective.

Lastly, I also love “Pivot” from Kara Swisher and professor Scott Galloway. I rarely miss a week! It keeps me close to my tech roots and they take on the meaty topics while holding big business accountable. Plus, their chemistry makes for a very entertaining as well as informative listen.

7. What’s an under the radar brand you’re watching and why?

There isn’t one brand, there are several. I’m obsessed with the smaller brands that are making a moment for themselves on social media. My online shopping habits (along with everyone else’s) has seen a huge spike since COVID. Outside of Amazon — my go to for utilitarian needs — I have discovered a number of brands through social media. Lunya is a women’s sleepwear and intimates brand that makes the most stylish, comfortable and luxurious pajamas. They do an amazing job of showcasing the key product benefits in their Facebook and Instagram ads and I am now hooked. 

Caddis Eyewear is another brand I would never have discovered if it weren’t for social media. They sell chic reading glasses with blue light blocking technology — perfect for the 8+ hour days on Zoom. They nailed their competitive advantage of stylish and useful and I am now the proud owner of blue light readers, even though I have 20/20 vision!

What excites me about this is the democratization of eCommerce that’s now taking place online. Brands that most of us may never have discovered are now having their moment in the spotlight. This will drive more innovation and create huge opportunities for smaller businesses to succeed. 

8. Name a product you can’t live without (that doesn’t connect you to the internet) and tell us why.

Does Peloton count? Pre-COVID, I was an avid boutique fitness enthusiast — I spent most of my mornings either at SoulCycle or Barry’s Bootcamp. While I owned a Peloton, I mostly used it when time-starved because I loved the sense of community and accountability of going into a studio. Fast forward to today where I can’t imagine a week where I am not using my Peloton — I love the bike, I’ve recently begun to dabble in their strength training classes and have started to use the app to take their sleep or relaxation meditation classes when I wake up in the middle of the night. 

I am a big believer that you can’t be your best self at work if you’re not giving to yourself first. So, working out in the morning is my way of giving to myself before I give to others. I appreciate the amazing job Peloton has done to make working out from home both accessible and enjoyable. And, they have managed to mimic the same level of accountability and community that I thought I could only get from an in-person class. 

9. Finish this sentence. If I weren’t a marketer, I would be…

Buying and flipping houses. I dream about doing this one day and may take it up as a hobby soon. I spend as much of my free time surfing real estate apps as I do on Instagram. It is my guilty pleasure. There is something about seeing the potential in a home and creating a plan to restore it to something beautiful that I find really compelling. I think it is the perfect opportunity to balance my keen business and project management skills with my obsession with design.

10. Finish this sentence: The marketer I most want to see do this questionnaire is…

Pam Kaufman, President of Consumer Products for ViacomCBS

Thanks for being part of the Marketer Must Read community! Feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts on marketing or if you have suggestions for who should be featured here. And don’t forget to hit subscribe above or below to be notified when the next issue comes out.